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\chapter*{Acknowledgments}

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the persons who
encouraged and supported this Master thesis, providing us with
knowledge and help for carrying it on until the end.

Thanks to Professor Andrea Castelletti, who engaged us in this
challenging work and many other experiences. We are grateful for
his unconditional trust and help. His advices and the time spent
together were useful for developing this thesis, but especially
precious for having fostered our growth and the participation to
many wonderful experiences like our American months, \acs{AGU}2012
and \acs{EGU}2013 conferences. He also provided us many
interesting suggestions for our future careers, we will keep in mind.
 
Thanks to Simone Bizzi. His constant support, commitment and
optimism were fundamental for stimulating us and showing us that
there are different ways of approaching the different issues and
their tricky aspects. His sincere excitement when approaching
unresolved scientific problems has been one of the major support
to face the unknown aspects of this work. We hope to be able
to carry it with us in future.

Thanks to Professor Kyungrock Paik. He showed a continuous
interest in our thesis and his suggestions were precious in all
the work phases, since the beginning, when he gave us the
opportunity to start working on his model, until the end, for the
results interpretation.
 
Thanks to Professor Patrick Reed and his research group. They
kindly hosted us during our research months at PennState
University in State College (PA, USA) and provided all the help
and assistance we needed for every kind of purpose in those
months. Working with Patrick's research group was a very enriching
experience, we will not forget in the future. Patrick's question
\enquote{who cares about your work?} was a new starting point for
going beyond the thesis topic as an academic matter, allowing us to
explore the bigger picture into which find a place for this
research.

Thanks to Marina De Maio. She showed great interest in deepening
the topic of our thesis and accepted with great enthusiasm to
co-supervise it.

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The months spent at PennState University working on this thesis
were possible thanks to the finances offered by the scholarship
\enquote{Politecnico di Milano - a.a. 2011/12 per tesi
all’estero}, we both could take advantage of.
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